This page will list everything that is needed to create published versions of our documentation for sale. The current plan is update the Handbook in order to provide a PDF to FreeBSD Mall for a printed book edition, and to create Google Book and Kindle versions for supported e-readers with e-reader proceeds going directly to the Foundation. Once this pilot project is complete, the viability of creating other publications for sale (e.g. Porter's Handbook) can be discussed.

There is still a demand for a printed version of the handbook from customers of e.g. FreeBSD Mall. It was suggested that the Fourth Edition should cover FreeBSD 9.X releases, and future books 10.X, 11.X etc. The current Third Edition was published in 1993 and covers FreeBSD 4.X and 5.X only. Due to the current size of the Handbook (currently 1491 printed pages), it was recommended to change from a two volume printed edition to a three volume edition: 1) FreeBSD installation and basic system administration 2) FreeBSD as a server OS 3) FreeBSD as a desktop OS. But since PC-BSD is making such a good progress on the desktop side, we should not try to compete with them when our resources can be focused elsewhere. So we decided that we should focus on 1) FreeBSD installation and basic system administration 2) FreeBSD as a server OS only.

Repository branch

The book will be created in a separate branch in SVN in order not to disrupt the current handbook too much. A typical example for this is the removal of non-9.X content from the print edition while the online handbook still has relevant 8.X information in it. We'll try to merge improvements made in the print edition branch back into the online handbook and plan to do so after the book is released. If you want to help out, send us patches against the branch, not the online handbook. This will increase the chances that your patch gets committed sooner (note that this is not the only criteria, but an important one).

Rough schedule

- schema update, tagging, and figuring out what is needed by end of 2012 - mostly finished, see table below

- content updating till end of October - under way, please see the lists below and pick tasks to work on

- November for copy-edit and review by Editor

- New date: publish in time for end of the year 2013

Editorial Discussion

- published version should remove authors names from section and include in Acknowledgements (should this also be for online edition?)

- some sub-sections are unnecessarily deep; do we want to place a cap on levels and reorganize accordingly?

- regarding trademarks, should we adopt the policy of "first mention" in the Copyright section, then no longer needed in rest of Handbook?

- the use of bold needs to be compared to typographic conventions

- not including Appendix D reduces Handbook from 1491 to 954 pages

- all sections should begin with a Synopsis/Introduction; should this be a subsection or just the introductory material after the title of the section?

- all sections (where applicable) should be divided between a Quick Start and Advanced topics

- would be useful for each section to end with a Troubleshooting section that contains common errors and how to resolve them as well as links to additional resources

- titles need to be reviewed for proper capitalization--are our title capitalization rules recorded in FDP?

- need a cheatsheet of formatting stuff for writers: title rules, when to include manpage number, how to setup a section, rules on subsections, not having titles with no content other than more subsections, when to use index tags, adding tags for older versions that won't be in the book, rule for using acronyms (e.g. only first use is spelled out), format of hyphenated words, reword titles with "?", figure naming, an or a before N,

Table 4: Chapter Status

Possible statuses are: needs review, needs to be written, needs to be removed, ready to publish.

Chapters which are currently missing from the Handbook should be added to the Table as they are written. Sections that are removed from the Handbook should also be removed from the table (and renumbered accordingly).

As PRs are closed, they should be removed from the Outstanding PRs column.

To ease review, the Chapter number listed in the table is at it appears in the online Handbook. This may or may not reflect the number that will be used in the printed edition. Table also includes extra items needed for a published edition (e.g. cover, masthead, index, etc.).

The following color codes are used to indicate the status of the items:

Color

Status

will not be part of the printed book

is being worked on

finished/committed

Chapter

Status

Outstanding PRs

Estimated Completion Date

Notes

Cover Front/Back

needs graphic and text for back cover

Masthead

includes publication info, license, book copyright

Copyright

need to review book for copyrighted terms and make sure they are attributed

Colophon

current print edition has paragraph describing the tools that are used to generate Handbook

Index

need to use index tag for keywords in order to generate a useful index for book

Preface

docs/144515

Intended Audience

Changes from the Third Edition

Organization of This Book

Conventions used in this book

should be title capitalized

Typographic Conventions

User Input

Examples

Acknowledgments

I. Getting Started

1 Introduction

1.1 Synopsis

1.2 Welcome to FreeBSD!

1.2.1 What Can FreeBSD Do?

1.2.2 Who Uses FreeBSD?

1.3 About the FreeBSD Project

1.3.1 A Brief History of FreeBSD

1.3.2 FreeBSD Project Goals

1.3.3 The FreeBSD Development Model

1.3.4 The Current FreeBSD Release

3 Installing FreeBSD 9.x and Later

docs/172784

(somewhere add info about Live DVD)

The online Chapter 2 will not be included as it does not cover 9.x

3.1 Synopsis

3.2 Hardware Requirements

3.2.1 Minimal Configuration

can the subsections be combined into a Table?

3.2.1.1 FreeBSD/i386

3.2.1.2 FreeBSD/amd64

3.2.1.3 FreeBSD/powerpc

3.2.1.4 FreeBSD/sparc64

3.2.2 Supported Hardware

3.3 Pre-installation Tasks

3.3.1 Back Up Your Data

3.3.2 Decide Where to Install FreeBSD

3.3.2.1 Disk Layouts for FreeBSD/i386 and FreeBSD/amd64

3.3.3 Collect Network Information

3.3.4 Check for FreeBSD Errata

3.3.5 Prepare the Installation Media

3.4 Starting the Installation

3.4.1 Booting

3.4.1.1 Booting on i386 and amd64

3.4.1.2 Booting for Macintosh PowerPC

3.4.1.3 Booting for SPARC64

3.4.2 Reviewing the Device Probe Results

3.5 Introducing bsdinstall

3.5.1 Selecting the Keymap Menu

3.5.2 Setting the Hostname

3.5.3 Selecting Components to Install

3.6 Installing from the Network

3.7 Allocating Disk Space

3.7.1 Guided Partitioning

3.7.2 Manual Partitioning

3.8 Committing to the Installation

3.9 Post-installation

docs/157908

3.9.1 Setting the root Password

3.9.2 Configuring Network Interfaces

3.9.2.1 Configuring a Wireless Network Interface

3.9.2.2 Configuring IPv4 Networking

3.9.2.2.1 IPv4 DHCP Network Configuration

3.9.2.2.2 IPv4 Static Network Configuration

3.9.2.3 Configuring IPv6 Networking

3.9.2.3.1 IPv6 Stateless Address Autoconfiguration

3.9.2.3.2 IPv6 Static Network Configuration

3.9.2.4 Configuring DNS

3.9.3 Setting the Time Zone

3.9.4 Selecting Services to Enable

3.9.5 Enabling Crash Dumps

3.9.6 Add Users

3.9.7 Final Configuration

3.9.8 FreeBSD Booting and Shutdown

3.9.8.1 FreeBSD/i386 Booting

3.9.9 FreeBSD Shutdown

3.10 Troubleshooting

3.10.1 What to Do If Something Goes Wrong

3.10.2 Troubleshooting Questions and Answers

2.12 Advanced Installation Guide

docs/120125 (may be more suited to 32.7.1?)

is this applicable to 9.x?

2.13 Preparing Your Own Installation Media

is this applicable to 9.x?

4 UNIX Basics

4.1 Synopsis

4.2 Virtual Consoles and Terminals

4.2.1 The Console

4.2.2 Logging into FreeBSD

4.2.3 Multiple Consoles

4.2.4 The /etc/ttys File

4.2.5 Single User Mode Console

4.2.6 Changing Console Video Modes

4.3 Permissions

docs/160445 was implemented - anything else?

4.3.1 Symbolic Permissions

4.3.2 FreeBSD File Flags

4.3.3 The setuid, setgid, and sticky Permissions

4.4 Directory Structure

4.5 Disk Organization

4.6 Mounting and Unmounting File Systems

4.6.1 The fstab File

4.6.2 The mount Command

4.6.3 The umount Command

4.7 Processes

4.8 Daemons, Signals, and Killing Processes

4.8.1 Sending a Signal to a Process

currently not tagged as a header

4.9 Shells

docs/111265

4.9.1 Changing Your Shell

4.10 Text Editors

4.11 Devices and Device Nodes

is this section still needed? basically adds 2 subsections with only meat being link to devfs(5)

4.11.1 Creating Device Nodes

4.11.1.1 DEVFS (DEVice File System)

4.12 Binary Formats

4.13 For More Information

does this belong here or in Appendix?

4.13.1 Manual Pages

4.13.2 GNU Info Files

does anyone still do this?

5 Installing Applications: Packages and Ports

5.1 Synopsis

5.2 Overview of Software Installation

5.3 Finding Your Application

5.4 Using the Packages System

docs/129464, docs/125329

5.4.1 Installing a Package

5.4.2 Managing Packages

5.4.3 Deleting a Package

5.4.4 Miscellaneous

this one-liner shouldn't be its own section but incorporated into the chapter

5.5 Using the Ports Collection

5.5.1 Obtaining the Ports Collection

this section contains 4 subsections which aren't tagged as such; for book, cvsup and sysinstall method should be removed and pkgng inserted